Three Truths about the Bible that Shape How I Read it
Before I tell you what these three truths are, I don’t want you to get the impression that I think this is all there is about the Bible. These three truths are just three unavoidable properties of the Bible that have had a direct impact on how I read it–indeed, on what I think the Bible “is.”
So here are the three truths:
The portrayal of God as violent, vindictive, and retributional (the moral problem)
What the Bible says happened often did not, at least not in the way that the Bible portrays them (this historical problem)
The Bible is multivocalic–it various authors express different and conflicting views on the same subject (the coherence problem)
These are “properties” of the Bible that I think about a lot and have certainly problematized the Bible for me with respect to how I was taught the Bible ought to be. All three of these truths are baked into the Bible. They are not exceptions to the rule of an otherwise well-behaved text. They cannot be wiped off as minor smudges on an otherwise shiny plate.
As for the first truth, divine violence is probably the issue I am asked about most in churches and in my college classes. Among the stories of violence just on the Pentateuch are:
The drowning of all living creatures except for a minimal few (Genesis 6-9).
The killing of the first born (10th plague) and the drowning of the Egyptian army after God hardens Pharaoh’s heart to entice him to give chase (Exodus 11 and 14).
God’s intent to kill all Israelites except Moses after the golden calf incident (Exodus 32).
The incineration of Nadab and Abihu for offering ”unauthorized fire” (Leviticus 10)
The wear against the Midianites and what was done with them (Numbers 31).
The divine command to exterminate the current occupants of Canaan and take their land (Deuteronomy 7, 20; also Joshua 6, 8, and elsewhere).
The gruesome list of curses against Israel should they disobey the covenant with God (Deuteronomy 28).
As for the second truth, the historical problems with the Bible are well known to careful readers. In a nutshell, events before about the 9th century BCE are not verifiable by historical data from outside of the Bible. This is when Israel is clearly on the world stage, a fact which can be seen by various archaeological finds that overlap with biblical stories (which we’ll look at in another newsletter).
From the 9th century on, the biblical story of Israel has more the feel of history than what comes before it. And if we move backward in time from the 9th century, things get more and more murky from a historical point of view. David and the united monarchy, the period of the judges, the conquest of Canaan, the exodus, the ancient ancestors (Abraham etc), and finally the origin stories of Genesis 1-11–all these stories have at best minimal and indirect, circumstantial, historical evidence to support them . . . or none at all.
The New Testament covers less historical ground but is not exempt from this “problem of history.” “What did the historical Jesus actually do and say?” is a perennial question in NT scholarship, and easy answers are not available. And these historical problems with Luke and Acts are recurring topics of academic conversation (e.g., Luke 2:1-7, Acts 15).
The third truth, multivocality, is a byproduct of the history of the Bible’s composition. After all, the lives of the authors of the biblical books span roughly a millennium. They wrote out of their own experiences in various points in history and for various purposes. The result is diverse and often contradictory views.
My go-to example of multivocality are:
the two creation stories in Genesis 1-3 (not to mention other angles on creation that we find in various psalms and in Job)
the different histories of Israel found in 1 Samuel-2 Kings and in 1 and 2 Chronicles
the four Gospels
the tensions between Paul and James concerning the relationship between works and faith (Galatians and James)
Truth be told, I have always been intrigued by how the Bible behaves. I was not raised in a conservative Christian household where the Bible was held up as the word of God without error or confusion. I am thankful for my upbringing in an immigrant German home.
But still. We are talking about the sacred text of the Christian faith, and it behaves in a way one would not expect a holy book to act.
And yet, there it is, behaving in ways that make some of us squirm.
My approach is to see the messiness of the Bible as a gift rather than a problem. I mean, it is what it is, and rather than making it into something else in order to make it align with what we simply know the Bible “should” be, I would rather take it for what it is and work out the theology later.
So that’s how these three truths shape how I read the Bible: I grapple with it. And that grappling is a good thing. The Bible’s messiness keeps me from looking to it as the answer book for my life. Rather, it reminds me that the Bible is an ancient witness of faith that gives me vocabulary for my own life of faith.
I see the Bible more as a companion in the life of faith than judge and jury of the content of the faith.